BAU Wins the Second Place at the Annual International Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence

The Annual International Berkeley Undergraduate Prize for Architectural Design Excellence held a competition focused on Architecture as a social art that largely affects people in their community. This competition encourages undergraduate students all over the globe to dig deep into that aspect and figure out how architects can be better change makers in their communities. The Faculty of Architecture- Design & Built Environment at BAU represented by its student Ghina Kanawati participated in this competition and won the Second Place Prize. This competition is endorsed by the Department of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, and has two parts, an essay competition and a travel fellowship competition, where only the essay semi-finalists can participate it. This year, the topic was about the nature of the social art of architecture and how can it be applied in society. The thesis invited students to look for two buildings in their local community that they feel best apply that social art, analyze them and conclude what can future architects learn from them. Kanawati chose two great examples from Beirut which are ‘Beit Beirut’ and ‘Vision 1974’ winning the second place prize in this competition.